• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

First-Ever Brain Surgery Within The Womb Successfully Treats Deadly Fetal Disorder

May 4, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Surgeons have successfully performed the first brain surgery on a fetus still in the womb, repairing a potentially deadly vascular malformation from deep within the developing brain. Using ultrasound to guide the surgeons, the fetus was operated on at just 34 weeks and two days gestational age, marking a huge leap forward in the treatment of developmental disorders.

The fetus was diagnosed with a vein of Galen malformation, an often deadly and aggressive formation that involves arteries within the brain connecting directly to veins instead of first passing through capillaries. Capillaries are specifically designed to slow down blood pressure, so the malformation results in extremely high blood pressure as it rushes straight into the veins. This places the brain and heart under enormous strain during and after birth and can lead to pulmonary hypertension, heart failure, and other life-threatening conditions. 

Advertisement

It is diagnosed during pregnancy and typically treated by a minimally invasive procedure called endovascular embolization, in which a surgeon enters through the groin and uses a tube to enter the brain vasculature, injecting glue to cut blood supply.  

The surgeons performed a similar surgery, but this time it was entirely in-utero. Under supervision of the US Food and Drug Administration, they managed to block high-pressure blood vessels in the brain of the fetus, preventing the surge of pressure during birth. 

Following the surgery, the child was born and appears to have no ongoing problems.  

“In our ongoing clinical trial, we are using ultrasound-guided transuterine embolization to address the vein of Galen malformation before birth, and in our first treated case, we were thrilled to see that the aggressive decline usually seen after birth simply did not appear,” said lead study author Darren B. Orbach, co-director of the Cerebrovascular Surgery & Interventions Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, in a statement.  

Advertisement

“We are pleased to report that at six weeks, the infant is progressing remarkably well, on no medications, eating normally, gaining weight and is back home. There are no signs of any negative effects on the brain.” 

Despite being watched closely following birth, the child did not need any cardiovascular support and all neurological scans were normal. There will now hopefully be more children that will undergo this procedure when possible, in the hopes of improving their outlook and continuing to improve the safety of the surgery. 

“While this is only our first treated patient and it is vital that we continue the trial to assess the safety and efficacy in other patients, this approach has the potential to mark a paradigm shift in managing vein of Galen malformation where we repair the malformation prior to birth and head off the heart failure before it occurs, rather than trying to reverse it after birth,” Orbach said.  

“This may markedly reduce the risk of long-term brain damage, disability or death among these infants.” 

Advertisement

The research is published in Stroke.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Indian fintech Slice launches $27 credit limit cards to tap 200 million users
  2. Massive uncut diamond unveiled in New York
  3. Indian edtech giant Byju’s valued at $18 billion in new funding
  4. The Wave Of Arizona Is A 190-Million-Year-Old Geological Masterpiece

Source Link: First-Ever Brain Surgery Within The Womb Successfully Treats Deadly Fetal Disorder

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Unethical Experiments: When Scientists Really Should Have Stopped What They Were Doing Immediately
  • The First Humans Were Hunted By Leopards And Weren’t The Apex Predators We Thought They Were
  • Earth’s Passage Through The Galaxy Might Be Written In Its Rocks
  • What Is An Einstein Cross – And Why Is The Latest One Such A Unique Find?
  • If We Found Life On Mars, What Would That Mean For The Fermi Paradox And The Great Filter?
  • The Longest Living Mammals Are Giants That Live Up To 200 Years In The Icy Arctic
  • Entirely New Virus Detected In Bat Urine, And It’s Only The 4th Of Its Kind Ever Isolated
  • The First Ever Full Asteroid History: From Its Doomed Discovery To Collecting Its Meteorites
  • World’s Oldest Pachycephalosaur Fossil Pushes Back These Dinosaurs’ Emergence By 15 Million Years
  • The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is Healing And On Track For Full Recovery In The 21st Century, Thanks To Science
  • First Sweet Potato Genome Reveals They’re Hybrids With A Puzzling Past And 6 Sets Of Chromosomes
  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version